Some questions remain unanswered for everyone

November 15, 2005

Kevin Wilson: PNT Staff Writer

Every so often, ideas will come into my head that I’ll just jot down. They’re all worth mentioning, but none is worth a column on its own. This weekend was chock full of them, mostly with a sports flavor. Now I present them to you, in convenient, bite-sized form:

• I spent part of my weekend in Albuquerque due to the state volleyball tournament and did some post-tournament shopping at a Barnes and Noble. The men’s restroom at this particular Barnes and Noble had a diaper-changing station for fathers taking their babies on a bookstore trip. To save space and create some semblance of privacy, the station is located in a stall with a toilet.

The layout made me think, “What if somebody needs to use the stall and a father needs to change his baby, and both enter the restroom at the same time? Which one takes precedence?” It’s an argument that could rival the chicken-egg debate.

• Say what you will about President Bush’s defense of the Iraq war during his latest speeches. To me, it seems like quite a disservice for our commander in chief to use Veterans Day as a stage to take swipes at those who argue against his actions, especially when many of those arguing are themselves veterans.

• When it all comes down to it, Martha Stewart is probably my favorite celebrity homemaker who served a jail sentence for insider trading to ever appear on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” to promote a new book.

• How bad is my favorite football team, the San Francisco 49ers? So bad that I only watched three plays of Sunday’s game and witnessed the opposing Chicago Bears set a National Football League record with a 108-yard missed field goal return for a touchdown.

• Let’s stick with what works. How bad are the Minnesota Vikings? It’s not often that a team returns an interception for a touchdown, returns a kickoff for a touchdown and returns a punt for a touchdown in the same game. It’s even more rare for a team to do all of that, and still need a last-second field goal to get a win, as the Vikings did against the New York Giants.

• I won’t be the first to make this point, and I certainly won’t be the last. When an NFL coach decides to go for it on fourth-and-goal at the 1 instead of kick a game-tying field goal (or go for two instead of the game-tying extra point), it’s called gutsy. It should be called playing the percentages.

Since the team that wins the coin toss in overtime usually goes on to win, tying the game at the end of regulation only gives you a 50-50 chance at winning. The average NFL team likely has a 70 percent chance of gaining a couple of yards. Running the option against the Baltimore Ravens … now that could be called gutsy.

• My favorite story from the state volleyball tournament: In the warmups before the Class 3A state championship between Pojoaque and Portales, two Pojoaque fans were discussing the football team’s first-round game at top-ranked Lovington.

One fan reported the score as 0-0. When asked what point the game was at, he said, “That was the score before kickoff,” causing both to chuckle and shake their heads in certain defeat. Lovington won 80-8.

Kevin Wilson is a staff writer for the Portales News-Tribune. He can be reached at 356-4481, ext. 32, or by e-mail:
Kevin_Wilson@
link.freedom.com